On the Power of Evolution
Georgios Sarailidis

Abstract:
We introduce a framework designed to mathematically study and model
the 'evolvability' of entities. Our use of 'evolvability' is different
than the one found in the context of biology. We roughly understand an
entity as being 'evolvable' if, with non-negligible probability, it
can arise as the result of an evolutionary process. However, this is
not a formal definition. An essential part of our work is to examine
how one may arrive at a formal definition for evolvability. The exact
definition will depend on one’s application of interest. With such a
definition in hand one may approach questions like "is there a
mechanism that can make such-and-such entities co-evolve under
such-and-such initial conditions, with non-negligible probability, in
a non-astronomical amount of time?" Ultimately, we are interested in
assessing the power of a given evolutionary process in terms of the
evolutionary products it can give rise to, the conditions and
resources necessary for this to happen, and the respective
probabilities of those events.